


Echoes

by jessejackreyes



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: M/M, Memories, Misremembering?, Recordings of the Past, Trust, Truth, ambiguous - Freeform, sort of angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-27
Updated: 2017-11-27
Packaged: 2019-02-07 18:18:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,868
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12846825
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jessejackreyes/pseuds/jessejackreyes
Summary: Sombra shows Reaper some bits from the past. They don't entirely agree with his own recollections.





	Echoes

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this little thing in response to Jeff's remarks about Jack defending Gabe and them being best war buddies.

“Oy! Gabrielito!”

A headache. That’s apparently what was on the agenda for the day. A huge headache. He groaned at the realization, knowing full well that Sombra would bother him repeatedly and obnoxiously until he gave her the attention she wanted and he was in no mood to deal with that at the moment. So instead, he simply turned towards her.

“What?” His irritated tone did nothing to dissuade her, it never did. She was too cocky for her own good.

“I got something to show you,” She waved a tablet in the air as she spoke.

“I’m not in the mood,” He grumbled, hoping in vain that she would just drop it.

“Not even if it has to do with your little soldado?” His anger flared enough for him to see red. He could hear the smug smirk as she spoke, as his body began smoking softly. It was a struggle to keep himself from lashing out. 

“Don’t test me!” He growled.

“Oh relax Gabi, I have something that I’m sure you will want to see,” He really didn’t like that tone. It always meant she was about to do something that he was going to regret.

“I’m busy,” He growled out, trying to dismiss her.

“No you’re not,” She answered back simply, gesturing for him to follow. He debated responding in several ways: simply leaving, strangling her, exploding dramatically into a dark cloud. In the end he simply followed the annoying woman, it would keep her from harassing him for days until he gave in just to shut her up. 

They made their way away from everyone else, all the way to Sombra’s little corner of the base. Here, at the very least they would have an impressive level of privacy. It was very difficult to spy on someone as skilled and paranoid as their resident little hacker. This also meant that she intended for whatever was going to happen to stay between the two of them. She didn’t say another word until they were in the safety of her little workshop.

“Let’s just get this over with,” He growled as the door closed behind them. “What did you want?”

“I was trawling around the UN and I found some recordings that you will find interesting,” He caught the tablet she tossed his way. “You may find it very relevant to that little soldado of yours,” 

He doesn’t rise to the obvious bait, instead simply turning his focus to the video file that she had left open. It was frozen, staring into a room full of people that he recognized. First was Jack, wearing his bright blue dress uniform, hair white before it’s time. The rest of them were various members of the UN, Adawe, Woerner, Soueng, Faraji, Juarez, and last and least, Petras. This must have been some kind of meeting about the shit going on with Overwatch at the time. Instead of speculating further, he simply pressed play.

“With all due respect director,” Jack’s voice was forceful and commanding in a room full of people who were clearly not used to dealing with the man like this. “Commander Reyes has served with distinction and has gotten exemplary results for almost two decades in a very thankless job,” The man had the attention of the entire council, even Petras, though he was clearly unhappy to be being challenged.

“His service record is not in question at the moment,” The man replied, interrupting the strike commander forcefully. “This is an unmitigated disaster and we need to act.”

“I agree,” Jack replied calmly. “However, I don’t believe throwing one of our most skilled and devoted men under the bus is the appropriate response.”

“I understand that you and commander Reyes have a very long history, but we can’t simply let everything he does go because you like him,” The condescension in the director’s tone was almost as telling as the sneer he was clearly hiding.

“I was unaware that there were other allegations against commander Reyes right now,” Jack replied sharply, challenging the other man to produce such claims.

“There is nothing official, but we have all heard the rumors,” Petras returned somewhat noncommittal.

“What rumors?”

“Supporting Dr. O’Deorain’s research is the most recent.”

“There is absolutely no evidence to back up those claims,” Jack replied forcefully. “How many witch hunts that lead nowhere is it going to take to convince this council that he is simply doing his job?”

“There are very good reasons that her work was discontinued,”

“I am well aware director. I helped to shut it down,” 

“Then you know how serious such allegations are,”

“Yes, and if there was any evidence to back them up I would not hesitate to act. I have, however, found none and since we are speaking hypotheticals now I would assume you don’t have any either,” Jack quickly dismissed the implication.

“Not at the moment,” Petras conceded after a brief silence. “But that’s not why we’re here,” He quickly pivoted away from that line of questioning. “Six civilians are dead and many more injured.”

“A tragic accident and not something that hasn’t happened in official missions that I have led personally.” For perhaps the first time in his life, Gabriel realized that he had never seen Jack like this, this part of his political persona, harsh, clinical and extremely intimidating. “Unfortunately, sometimes our intel is wrong and things go wrong. All we can do is our best with what we have,” The speech ended with his strong, warmer tone, inspirational, instead of intimidating.

“We cannot sit here and do nothing,” Woerner spoke up forcefully.

“I agree,” Jack responded quickly. “But we need to keep from acting rashly and causing mroe harm than good.”

“Let’s put it to a vote,” Petras declared, disrupting any continued debate. “All of those in favor of terminating Gabriel Reyes as commander of Blackwatch,” The call was followed by three hands raising, Petras, Woerner and Soueng. The scowl on Petras’ face was quite impressive as the votes were counted.

“Opposed,” Jack called out, watching as three hands rose as well: Adawe, Faraji and Juarez were opposed. A tie, three to three. The tiebreaking vote was left to the strike commander himself. “And I am opposed,” He declared, carefully hiding the triumph from his voice. Morrison and Petras’ staredown was clearly making the rest of the council nervous. Even Reaper thought it might come to blows, not that Jack was in any danger, before Adawe spoke up.

“I would suggest a compromise,” She waited until everyone’s attention was on her before elaborating. “Instead of hastily removing Reyes from command, I suggest suspending all Blackwatch activity and launching a special investigation into the organization’s actions. We can reconsider the commander’s position once we know more about the goings on behind the scenes,” There were murmurs of assent from around the table.

“Very well,” Adawe’s compromise appeared to have mollified Petras somewhat. “All in favor of suspension and launching a special investigation.” Six hands were raised, all but the strike commander’s. “Very well. Commander Reyes and all Blackwatch assets are suspended pending the completion of said investigation.” There were murmurs of approval around the table. “I trust that commander Morrison will have no problem informing the commander of our decision.”

“Of course not,” Jack replied as diplomatically as he could manage. “When this investigation turns up nothing I hope we will be able to resume operations as normal,”

The video cut out as Jack turned to leave, presumably when he had sent Gabriel the emergency call that led to them discussing the suspension, not that he had listened to the suspension. He had simply shifted his operations to being more low key and he couldn’t use Overwatch assets, but he had kept up his more important ops.

“Why did you show me this?” Gabriel had all but growled, smoking. He wasn’t sure when he had begun losing a hold of his form.

“Wait, wait wait,” She replied energetically. “That’s not even the best part.” She waved her hand and the old tablet screen shifted to another file. “I found this in the ruins of Zurich,” She explained. “The tablet belonged to the supposedly dead strike commander and it was in surprisingly good condition.”

He glanced through the file. It was in part a profile of Moira and her research and why Overwatch had discontinued supporting it, but it was not simply a profile. It included pictures of Gabriel and Moira, information about Blackwatch’s dealings with her and the resources it had given her to work with. He had no idea why Sombra would have wanted him to look at this until she mentioned that the tablet had been Jack’s.

“When?”

“He was sent the file from an unknown source six days before that meeting you saw. It was accessed sixteen separate times over those six days,”

“He lied.”

“Big time, though if you watch a bunch of the other ones, he does it a lot really,” She shrugged as she spoke. “His silver tongue puts even Akande to shame,”

“Why did you show this to me?” Reaper voice was suddenly cold, dangerous as he repeated his question. Sombra paused briefly, considering her words carefully before she responded.

“I heard your little fight in Oasis.” When Reaper didn’t interrupt, she continued. “Both of you told two seemingly very different stories and I was curious as to what actually happened.”

Gabriel’s mind drifted to Jack’s words that day. “There are a lot of things you can blame me for, but don’t you dare tell me I didn’t trust you. I trusted and stood up for you until the very end you bastard.” 

He had dismissed what Jack had been saying as simply more of his lies, but now, he wasn’t so sure.

“What are you trying to accomplish?”

“No ulterior motives,” Her grin betrayed otherwise as she spoke. “I merely wished to spread the truth. You always like acting with accurate information after all.” When he didn’t respond to her casually calling him out immediately, she continued. “I put all of the recordings I could find on there and marked the ones I think would be of the most interest to you, though you might want to watch them all.” 

Gabriel scrolled through a large list of several dozen videos as she spoke, internally debating whether he should just throw the damn thing away or not. He was suddenly forced to question things that he knew to be true, the distance, the lack of faith, the betrayal. These had been such integral parts of his life for years and suddenly they were in doubt, somehow. By the time he pulled himself out of his head Sombra had departed, which kept him from having to storm off at the very least.

His actual decision was made regardless of what he actually wanted. There was no way he could avoid knowing exactly what had happened when he had the opportunity. Working off of unfinished information always bothered him and this was no exception. He had to resign himself to a very long night of home movies and from the look of Sombra’s mood, it was going to be very educational.


End file.
